you can . . . It must look familiar?’
At last she squinted at the plans, seeing something resembling an explosion, a thousand little pieces scattered in random profusion.
She did not have to say it: he nodded resignedly. ‘Ten years ago, before anyone in Collegium had even thought of the idea, someone in the Empire – some mad genius – was already
building rational machines of a complexity that nobody has matched since. This work . . . it’s beautiful, perfect. And I can learn from it, duplicate it even . . .’
‘Well what is it, this glorious whatnot of yours?’ Te Mosca was ready for it to be a weapon. Every artificer in the city was talking weapons just now and, given that they had only
just beaten the Imperial Second Army back, she supposed that was entirely reasonable.
‘It’s an arm,’ Gerethwy told her simply. ‘He constructed a rational arm: a mechanical arm that would translate the motions of his stump.’
She looked at him, from his mangled hand to the frank, innocent and slightly off-balance look in his face, and felt very sad because, despite the long and learned pedigree of his kinden and the
mystery of his origins, he was still little more than a boy, and they had made him a soldier, and he still thought it could all be put right.
The tragedy was, she knew, that he was telling her precisely because she could not understand. Amongst his friends and his comrades, he would remain as taciturn as ever, unwilling to let them in
on his secret projects for fear he would be told that none of them would work.
‘Officer Antspider, orders for you.’
The Fly-kinden pressed the scroll into her hand and was off into the skies of Collegium before Straessa could object. She was left standing in the street, just twenty feet from the
bookbinder’s that Eujen lodged over. If she had been a little brisker on her way, then the missive might never have found her.
Straessa – called the Antspider because, whilst Collegiates might be fair to halfbreeds, they still tended to point at them in the street – had a strong urge to cast the scroll in a
fire and deny it had ever found her, but she was not the feckless student she had once been. Putting on the uniform of the Merchant Companies had taken half her naivety from her, and going out to
fight the Wasps had done the rest. Under the banner of the Coldstone Company she had shed blood for Collegium. Her commanding officer had been assassinated. Her maniple and its neighbours had been
routed. Her friend Gerethwy had been maimed by his own weapon. She had rallied her troops and gone back, with the lunatics from Myna, to try and slow the Wasp advance, to attack their artillery, to
do
something
other than simply wait for the end. Memories like that could be expected to leave their mark on a girl, she reckoned.
Since General Tynan’s Second had been forced to retreat by Collegiate air-power, the soldiers of the Merchant Companies had been training and recruiting, or at least trying to recruit.
Numbers were still down – hardly surprising after the beating they had taken at the hands of the more disciplined Wasp soldiers. Everyone was pulling double shifts: Straessa had little enough
time to herself, and this should have been one of those times. She had wanted to take off the breastplate and the buff coat, just for a little while; to make it up with Eujen and pretend she was
just a student again, with no more to worry about than the end-of-year exams and making a little money on the side as a sword instructor.
Orders were never a good thing. Orders meant that something had changed.
The Second is on the move again.
That was the most obvious conclusion. For a moment, her mind’s eye superimposed the battlefield over the tidy little Collegiate street, the
shouting and the screams, the thunderous clatter of the monstrous Imperial automotives, the chaos of the retreat.
She steadied herself, by which time her hands had broken the seal. There was nothing
At last she squinted at the plans, seeing something resembling an explosion, a thousand little pieces scattered in random profusion.
She did not have to say it: he nodded resignedly. ‘Ten years ago, before anyone in Collegium had even thought of the idea, someone in the Empire – some mad genius – was already
building rational machines of a complexity that nobody has matched since. This work . . . it’s beautiful, perfect. And I can learn from it, duplicate it even . . .’
‘Well what is it, this glorious whatnot of yours?’ Te Mosca was ready for it to be a weapon. Every artificer in the city was talking weapons just now and, given that they had only
just beaten the Imperial Second Army back, she supposed that was entirely reasonable.
‘It’s an arm,’ Gerethwy told her simply. ‘He constructed a rational arm: a mechanical arm that would translate the motions of his stump.’
She looked at him, from his mangled hand to the frank, innocent and slightly off-balance look in his face, and felt very sad because, despite the long and learned pedigree of his kinden and the
mystery of his origins, he was still little more than a boy, and they had made him a soldier, and he still thought it could all be put right.
The tragedy was, she knew, that he was telling her precisely because she could not understand. Amongst his friends and his comrades, he would remain as taciturn as ever, unwilling to let them in
on his secret projects for fear he would be told that none of them would work.
‘Officer Antspider, orders for you.’
The Fly-kinden pressed the scroll into her hand and was off into the skies of Collegium before Straessa could object. She was left standing in the street, just twenty feet from the
bookbinder’s that Eujen lodged over. If she had been a little brisker on her way, then the missive might never have found her.
Straessa – called the Antspider because, whilst Collegiates might be fair to halfbreeds, they still tended to point at them in the street – had a strong urge to cast the scroll in a
fire and deny it had ever found her, but she was not the feckless student she had once been. Putting on the uniform of the Merchant Companies had taken half her naivety from her, and going out to
fight the Wasps had done the rest. Under the banner of the Coldstone Company she had shed blood for Collegium. Her commanding officer had been assassinated. Her maniple and its neighbours had been
routed. Her friend Gerethwy had been maimed by his own weapon. She had rallied her troops and gone back, with the lunatics from Myna, to try and slow the Wasp advance, to attack their artillery, to
do
something
other than simply wait for the end. Memories like that could be expected to leave their mark on a girl, she reckoned.
Since General Tynan’s Second had been forced to retreat by Collegiate air-power, the soldiers of the Merchant Companies had been training and recruiting, or at least trying to recruit.
Numbers were still down – hardly surprising after the beating they had taken at the hands of the more disciplined Wasp soldiers. Everyone was pulling double shifts: Straessa had little enough
time to herself, and this should have been one of those times. She had wanted to take off the breastplate and the buff coat, just for a little while; to make it up with Eujen and pretend she was
just a student again, with no more to worry about than the end-of-year exams and making a little money on the side as a sword instructor.
Orders were never a good thing. Orders meant that something had changed.
The Second is on the move again.
That was the most obvious conclusion. For a moment, her mind’s eye superimposed the battlefield over the tidy little Collegiate street, the
shouting and the screams, the thunderous clatter of the monstrous Imperial automotives, the chaos of the retreat.
She steadied herself, by which time her hands had broken the seal. There was nothing
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